The final report from the Envisioning Equal Justice initiative has just been released. I’ve only just had a chance to skim it, but in doing so I have noted a continuous thread throughout the report suggesting that it is essential, if we are to move forward effectively on the issue of access to justice, that we know what we know and what we don’t yet know. In other words, we need to establish a solid base of evidence that will support the actions we take to increase access to justice.

The report writers point out that:

We know little about

We all receive – and many of us send – electronic holiday greetings this time of year. They can range from a simple email to animated cards to elaborate videos.

Next December the new anti-spam law (aka CASL) will be in force. Depending on how we send holiday greetings, what is in them, and who we send them to, CASL will act like the Grinch to classify some of them as spam, and make the sender subject to a massive fine or other remedies.

Figuring out whether a Christmas card is spam, like any other electronic message, will not be . . . [more]

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this last week:

1. R. v. Duncan 2013 ONCJ 160
   

   1. “You should get out of town”, the man said.
   2. And so began the journey that resulted in my path intersecting with Matthew Duncan’s path. And thence to these reasons, with a slight detour through territory that might have confused Lewis Carroll.
   3. I suppose that I should clarify that there was no menace in the

Have you considered how to best use your marketing department? Do you come to them once an idea has been flushed out and expect them to deliver on the concept without the background information? Or do you employ them early in the process, let them help you define the problem and then develop a solution? If you are part of the latter group I applaud you. Unfortunately most lawyers and law firms are in the former category.

There are many reasons why your firms marketing department has a good or bad reputation. A good marketing department is engaged early and . . . [more]

We have a pretty darn fantastic research training program at my shop. We offer learning objective based source training and give refresher training at lawyers desks, in groups, as feature items on meeting agendas, and we also share what we know via blogs, email bulletins and on our Intranet in both text and multimedia. We keep our skills sharp by attending vendor delivered training and by doing legal research daily.

Even with this highly programmed scenario we learn search quirks by initially not getting things quite right and then figuring out why things did not work as expected. Here is . . . [more]

For those of us lawyers who routinely use Wikipedia as a source of basic information, it may be tempting to adduce a Wikipedia printout into evidence in court. After all, Wikipedia is more complete and often more specific than other encyclopedia out there. But is it reliable? Believe it or not, this question has been considered and debated by judges on many occasions in recent years since the advent of Wikipedia in 2001.

This past summer, the Superior Court rendered judgment in a criminal law matter and specifically considered the admissibility of Wikipedia evidence. The main issue on appeal in . . . [more]

The Law Society of British Columbia has published a warning to members concerning a species of malware known as CryptoLocker Ransomware. The malware, thought to originate in Eastern Europe or Russia, infects your machine in the usual way, e.g. when you open a dodgy email attachment or other file; but then it proceeds to encrypt most of the files on your computer, eventually denying you access. The malware operators then contact you with an offer to decrypt your files if you pay a certain amount of ransom—often demanded in untraceable Bitcoin. Payment can result in the release of your encrypted . . . [more]

As the courts in Canada continue to struggle with difficult issues relating to the enforcement of arbitration agreements and the enforcement of arbitral awards, it is worth looking at how courts in other common law jurisdictions see the relationship between the courts and arbitration.

The Hon James Allsop, Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia, gave a very thoughtful address at 2013 Clayton Utz University of Sydney International Arbitration Lecture (29 October 2013).

Like others, he sees serious problems with the trend in many countries toward “over-elaborate, over-lawyered, and slow and costly [arbitration] hearings. …[R]ecalcitrance and excessive demands for . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on technology, research and practice.

Technology

All the Accounts You Should Enable Two-Factor Authentication on Right Now
Dan Pinnington

I have given this tip before, but it is worth giving again (thanks to the nudge in this LifeHacker post): Two-factor authentication is one of the best things you . . .

Research

Attend Vendor Delivered Training
Shaunna Mireau

The people who know most about what features a product has are the people who made it. . . . [more]

This article by Nora Rock, corporate writer & policy anylist at LAWPRO, appeared in the December 2013 edition of the LAWPRO Magazine. All Magazine articles can be found at www.lawpro.ca/magazinearchives

Our readers should now be well aware that problems with lawyer-client communication are the number one cause of malpractice claims. Managing communication takes patience and effort: at one extreme of the spectrum, responding to calls and messages from clients who want constant contact can be frustrating; while at the other end, trying to get absentee clients to update instructions or produce necessary documents can be time-consuming. How can you get . . . [more]

Much of what I heard from self-represented litigants in my 2011-12 study – and continue to hear in the mail we receive daily at the National Self-Represented Litigants Project – centred on what type of assistance they really wanted and felt that they needed.

How SRLs want help

SRLs want help – that is loud and clear. On-line resources get them part of the way – sometimes. But they want face-to-face help too.

Almost all of them say that they want lawyers. But they cannot afford to use a lawyer for every step of their case.

They want help to . . . [more]

The Commons on the photo sharing site Flickr has brought together institutions from around the world to share their images (photographs, illustrations and the like) that are either in the public domain or available for open use.

I was surprised to notice last week that a Law Society of Upper Canada Archives is part of The Commons.

According to an undatec LSUC press release:

The Law Society Archives is pleased to announce that it has been admitted to The Commons on Flickr, a grouping of institutions from around the world that contain archival photograph collections which are available on